Victor Ponta - 2012-2015
Following the fall of the Ungureanu Government, the result of the adoption of the USL motion of censure, on 27 April 2012 Victor Ponta was appointed by President Traian Basescu as candidate for prime minister. On May 7, 2012, he received Parliament's vote of investiture.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta's ruling Social-Liberal Union was expected to take about 57 percent of the vote on 09 December 2012. President Traian Basescu's Right Romania Alliance was trailing at a distant second with close to 19 percent. The two candidates have been locked in a personal feud since Ponta tried and failed to impeach Basescu in July. Basescu has hinted that he might refuse to re-appoint Ponta, regardless of who wins the election.
Victor Ponta was born on September 20, 1972, in Bucharest. He graduated from "Ion Neculce" High School in Bucharest (1991); graduate of the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest (1995). He graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the framework of the United Nations Development Program, Bucharest (October 1998).
He was a prosecutor at the Prosecutor's Office attached to District 1 Court (1995-1998); Prosecutor - Department of Anticorruption, Criminal Investigation and Criminalistics, specialized in economic and financial crimes, Prosecutor's Office attached to the Supreme Court of Justice (1998-2001); prosecutor and coordinator of the Office for Combating Money Laundering (2000 - 2001). He is a member of the National Council of the Social Democratic Party (since October 12, 2002) in the PSD Central Executive Bureau (November 9, 2002).
On August 30, 2012, he was elected Vice President of the Socialist International. In December 2004, he was elected a deputy in the constituency no. 20 Gorj on the lists of the PSD + PUR National Union, renewed on November 30, 2008 by the Political Alliance PSD + PC, when it obtained more than 50% of the votes validly cast. At the parliamentary elections on December 9, 2012, he won uninominal college no. 6 from Gorj, obtaining a new mandate for deputy.
Regarding government activity, Victor Ponta was a state secretary, head of the Government Control Corps (2001-2004); member of the Board of Supervisors and Guidance of the Authority for the Recovery of Banking Assets and member of the Special Commission on Criminal Matters committed by Members of the Government (2001); Deputy Minister for the Control of Implementation of International Financing Programs and Follow-up to the Application of the Community Acquis (March 2004 - December 2004).
Exit polls from Romania's parliamentary election gave the ruling center-left ruling alliance a clear victory in the December 09, 2012 vote. Two polls indicated Prime Minister Victor Ponta's ruling Social-Liberal Union was expected to take about 57 percent of the vote. President Traian Basescu's Right Romania Alliance was trailing at a distant second with close to 19 percent. The two candidates had been locked in a personal feud since Ponta tried and failed to impeach Basescu in July. Basescu had hinted that he might refuse to re-appoint Ponta, regardless of who wins the election.
Romanian President Traian Basescu appointed his arch-rival as prime minister and asked him to form the country's new government. The move 17 December 2012 followed Prime Minister Victor Ponta's center-left governing alliance winning a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections. There were concerns that the partnership may not last. The two men have been locked in a personal feud since Ponta tried, but failed, to impeach the president in July.
EU officials had accused Ponta of undermining the rule of law and voiced concern the feud between the two would bring more political turmoil to the EU's second-poorest state, which is struggling to recover from tough austerity measures.
Romania voted 02 November 2014 for a new president. Incumbent President Traian Basescu was stepping down after 10 years in office. Analysts said Prime Minister Victor Ponta woul likely become the country's new leader. Ponta was expected to win the first round of voting among 14 candidates, but not by enough to avoid a runoff in December. The former prosecutor had pledged, if he was elected, to lower taxes, raise pensions and to uphold good relations with the European Union. Klaus Iohannis, the mayor of a city in central Romania, won about 54 percent of Sunday's vote, a surprising change from the first round of balloting in which he trailed Prime Minister Victor Ponta, 42, by 10 percent.
Ponta conceded, saying "the people are always right" and pledging to fulfill his duties as long as he holds a public position. He looked to allay fears of political tensions after suffering a surprise defeat in the election, saying he was committed to dialog and stability. Ponta also agreed to a demand by Iohannis to scrap a corruption amnesty bill pending in parliament.
Analysts had said a victory for Ponta might have bolstered Romania, with the main levers of power held by one bloc. By contrast, although he distances himself from the outgoing president's combative style, Iohannis' win may trigger renewed political tensions in one of Europe's poorest states. Prime minister since 2012, Ponta often feuded with his rival, outgoing President Traian Basescu, which stymied policymaking and caused a constitutional crisis.
Prime Minister Ponta came under opposition pressure to resign after an academic panel concluded that he copied a significant part of his doctoral thesis from other authors without proper attribution. On the Bucharest University website, there is still a document of the Ethics Commission which contains the following conclusions about Victor Ponta's doctoral thesis: " at least one third of the sentence is plagiarized ", "the thesis represents a massive plagiarism achieved through multiple collages big blocks of text "and, finally, a clear answer to the question," Is the plagiarism VP intentional? ". The answer is " Yes".
In late September 2015 Romania's parliament began to debate a vote of no confidence against the prime minister, a week after he went on trial for corruption charges. Premier Victor Ponta was on trial on charges of tax evasion, money laundering, conflict of interest and making false statements while he was working as a lawyer in 2007 and 2008. He denied wrongdoing. He was likely to survive the vote, as the opposition has been unable to muster sufficient support.
Romania's Prime Minister Victor Ponta said 04 November 2015 his government was resigning in response to protests demanding he and other top officials step down after a nightclub fire resulted in 32 deaths. The protesters allege several senior officials allowed themselves to be bribed in exchange for permits to put on shows in crowded and unsafe clubs.
Thirty-two young concert-goers died and 200 others were badly injured, after fireworks set off during a show at the Colectiv nightclub ignited the ceiling and caused a stampede of some 400 people toward the only exit. Waving banners reading "Corruption Kills," the protesters demanded the resignations of Prime Minister Ponta, deputy Gabriel Oprea, and the mayor of the Bucharest district, where the club was located.
Ponta's resignation was long overdue. Not just because of the proven plagiarism of his doctoral thesis, or the charges of corruption leveled against him. No - soon after he took office in the summer of 2012, he began undermining the laws of the state in order to drive his most hated rival, President Traian Basescu, out of office and to take control of the justice system. Luckily for Romania, his attempt failed miserably - however, he remained in office.
The highest profile indictment scored by the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) was that of Victor Ponta, who served as prime minister for several months in 2015 before resigning after the infamous Colectiv nightclub fire. The incident, which killed 64 people and injured 147, became connected to the corruption scandal when it was revealed that the Romanian government had granted the club licenses to operate pyrotechnics without consulting the fire department. DNA indicted Ponta, the very man who appointed Kovesi when he was serving as justice minister in 2013, for forgery, money laundering and tax evasion. The case against Ponta was eventually closed in 2017.
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